The camera cut back to the Sacred Order locker room, and the room no longer looked like a place where men prepared for battle. It looked like a shrine that had just been struck by lightning.
Incense still smoldered in a shallow brass bowl near the far wall. Prayer beads hung from a steel hook beside neatly folded black robes. A low wooden table held a lacquered box, a chipped porcelain teacup, and an old ceremonial cloth marked with faded kanji. The room had always carried that strange tension unique to the Sacred Order, one foot in the world of wrestlers and one foot in something older, stranger, heavier. Discipline. Ritual. Silence.
Ryota Arakawa shattered all of it with a roar and a flying steel chair.
The chair slammed into a bank of lockers with a brutal metallic explosion. One locker door caved inward. Another sprang open. The incense bowl rattled. The teacup tipped and cracked against the wood. The sound ripped through the room so violently that even the camera seemed to jolt with it.
Ryota stood there breathing hard, chest rising and falling like a bull ready to gore somebody. His fists were clenched so tightly the veins in his forearms bulged. His long dark hair clung damply to the sides of his face. He had not calmed down after watching Kami Nakada walk out with the title she had taken from Tatsu Hime. If anything, the sight of it had broken something open in him.
Across the room, Saikō Sasori sat cross-legged on a bench, back straight, hands resting on his knees.
His eyes had been closed.
Now they were open.
Slowly.
Without hurry.
That only made Ryota angrier.
To one side, Shinku Ryujin stood against the wall like a carved guardian at the gate of a temple. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest. His red dragon mask hid most of his face, but the exposed lower half wore a hard, bitter frown. His eyes were still shut. The red shadow around them bled into the edges of the mask like dried war paint. He looked like wrath held on a chain.
Ryota took a step forward.
Then another.
Ryota: This is what we are now?
His voice bounced off the steel and concrete, raw with disgust.
Ryota kicked the fallen chair aside and pointed toward the door as though Kami Nakada herself were still visible through it.
Ryota: We just stood there and watched another one of us fail. Another humiliation. Another warning. Another crack in the wall.
Sasori said nothing.
Ryota laughed once, a short, ugly sound with no humor in it.
Ryota: Of course. Of course you say nothing.
He spread his arms and turned in a half-circle, gesturing at the room, the lockers, the cloth, the incense, the whole pathetic little sanctum they had built around themselves.
Ryota: Sit. Breathe. Meditate. Fold your hands. Burn your incense. While everything around us burns for real.
Sasori’s face did not change, but one finger on his knee curled ever so slightly inward.
Ryota saw it.
He moved closer.
Ryota: Good. You heard that.
Shinku opened his eyes.
Only then did the room seem to get quieter.
He did not uncross his arms. He did not move away from the wall. He just watched now, silent and severe, his gaze sliding from Ryota to Sasori and back again.
Ryota’s voice thickened with emotion, rage mixing now with something uglier and more human.
Ryota: Tatsu Hime lost that title, and Kami kept it. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand what that cost us?
He jabbed a finger into his own chest.
Ryota: I do.
Then he pointed at Shinku.
Ryota: He does.
Then at Sasori.
Ryota: Do you?
Sasori remained seated for one more moment, then slowly rose to his feet. The movement was calm, controlled, deliberate. It should have defused the moment.
It did the opposite.
Ryota stepped right into him.
Ryota: No. Don’t do that. Don’t stand up and give me that look like you’re above this. Don’t give me the mask. Don’t give me the legend. I’m not asking the Scorpion King right now. I’m talking to the man I grew up with.
That landed harder than the chair had.
For the first time, something faint shifted in Sasori’s eyes. Not shock. Not anger. Just a tiny flicker, as if Ryota had put a blade exactly where he meant to.
Ryota saw it and pressed.
Ryota: You cannot fail tonight.
His voice lowered, and somehow that made it more dangerous.
Ryota: You do not get to fail like the rest of us have failed.
Shinku’s jaw tightened.
Shinku Ryujin: Ryota.
Ryota did not even look at him.
Ryota: No. He’s going to hear this.
He pointed toward the arena, toward the match waiting for Sasori, toward the entire night balanced on a single result.
Ryota: Drake Nygma can call himself whatever he wants. Nygma. The Sphinx. I don’t care. If that man gets his hands on the Red Orb mounted on the Ultimate Wrestling Championship belt, then all of this becomes bigger than wrestling. Bigger than AAPW. Bigger than our titles and our pride and our stupid little failures.
His voice cracked. Not from weakness. From strain.
Ryota: Japan falls into chaos first.
He took another step closer, nearly chest to chest with Sasori now.
Ryota: Then the rest of the world follows.
The words hung in the room like smoke.
Even Shinku did not interrupt this time.
Ryota’s eyes were wild, but there was grief in them now too. Fear. Shame. The helpless fury of a strong man watching the world slip beyond strength.
Ryota: We were supposed to stop this.
He looked down for a second, then back up again.
Ryota: We were supposed to hold the line.
His voice turned bitter.
Ryota: Tatsu Hime lost. Kami still stands over us with that title. Every enemy we bury grows another head. Every warning we ignore comes back louder. And you…
He looked Sasori up and down, disgust and heartbreak colliding.
Ryota: You sit in silence and trust fate like fate has ever loved men like us.
That one cut.
Sasori’s jaw flexed.
Barely.
But Ryota saw it.
Ryota: There you are.
Shinku finally pushed off the wall.
Not much. Just enough.
Just enough to remind both men that if this crossed one more line, he would be in the middle of it.
Shinku Ryujin: Enough.
Ryota rounded on him.
Ryota: No, it is not enough! That is the problem! None of this has been enough!
He pointed at the dented lockers.
Ryota: Not our discipline. Not our vows. Not our blood. Not our losses.
Then back at Sasori.
Ryota: So hear me now. If you lose to the Sphinx, if you let him take that Orb, then everything we claimed to protect dies with us. Japan. The balance. The order. All of it. Gone. And it will be gone because when the moment came, you failed too.
Silence.
A living, hateful silence.
Sasori stared at him.
Not blankly. Not emptily. There was thought in it. Pain in it. A deep old sorrow Ryota was too furious to see clearly. This was not a man who did not care. This was a man carrying so much that speech itself had become dangerous.
He looked past Ryota then, toward the broken chair, the rattled incense, the ruined little sanctuary.
Then to Shinku.
And in that glance, years seemed to pass between them.
Training yards.
Cold mountain mornings.
Shared vows.
Old wounds.
Dead mentors.
Victories.
Burials.
Everything that had once made the Sacred Order feel unbreakable.
Ryota mistook the silence for weakness.
Ryota: Say something.
Nothing.
Ryota: Damn you, Sasori, say something!
Sasori took one step forward.
For a heartbeat, it looked like he might finally answer.
Instead, he stepped around Ryota.
Ryota turned sharply.
Ryota: That’s it?
Sasori kept walking.
Ryota: That’s your answer?
Still nothing.
Ryota’s breathing became ragged. Desperation crept fully into the anger now.
Ryota: We built this together!
Sasori reached the door.
Ryota: We bled for this together!
His hand closed around the handle.
Ryota: We buried people for this together!
That made Sasori stop.
Only for a second.
A cruel second.
Just long enough to make it feel like he might turn back.
Just long enough to make the room remember what brotherhood used to look like.
But he did not turn.
Ryota’s voice dropped to almost a plea.
Ryota: Don’t walk away from me like I’m wrong.
Shinku’s eyes lowered.
Sasori opened the door.
Ryota: If you walk out that door and fail tonight, you don’t just lose a match. You lose us.
That finally did it.
Not a flinch. Not a speech. Not some dramatic promise.
Saikō Sasori paused in the doorway and tilted his head just slightly, not enough to look back, just enough to show he had heard every word.
Then he walked out.
The door shut behind him with a hard, flat thud.
The room felt enormous after that.
Ryota stood frozen, staring at the closed door as if rage alone might rip it open again. But his anger had nowhere to go now. It curdled inside him. His shoulders rose and fell. His hands opened and closed. The great Iron Musha, warrior guardian, looked for a moment like a man who had just watched a bridge collapse beneath his own feet.
Shinku studied him in silence.
Then he looked toward the door Sasori had vanished through.
When he spoke, his voice was low and cold.
Shinku Ryujin: You spoke to him like an enemy.
Ryota swallowed, still staring at the door.
Ryota: Then maybe he needed to hear it that way.
Shinku took a slow breath through his nose.
Shinku Ryujin: Or maybe you were afraid that if you spoke to him like a brother... he might have broken in front of you.
That hit Ryota harder than anything else had.
For the first time since the scene began, he had no answer.
Shinku uncrossed his arms at last and stepped toward the shattered order of the room, toward the cracked cup, the fallen chair, the bent locker door.
He looked at the damage Ryota had done.
Then at Ryota himself.
Shinku Ryujin: Pray you did not just help the darkness more than the Sphinx ever could.
And with that, the room went still again.
Not peaceful.
Never peaceful.
Just still in the way battlefields sometimes went still right before the next charge.